Names matter

What works, what doesn't?

NO

myabstract.docx
Joe’s Filenames Use Spaces and Punctuation.xlsx
figure 1.png
fig 2.png
JW7d^(2sl@deletethisandyourcareerisoverWx2*.txt

YES

2014-06-08_abstract-for-sla.docx
joes-filenames-are-getting-better.xlsx
fig01_scatterplot-talk-length-vs-interest.png
fig02_histogram-talk-attendance.png
1986-01-28_raw-data-from-challenger-o-rings.txt

Three principles for (file) names

  1. Machine readable

  2. Human readable

  3. Plays well with default ordering

Awesome file names :)

Machine readable

Machine readable

  • Regular expression and globbing friendly
    • Avoid spaces, punctuation, accented characters, case sensitivity
  • Easy to compute on
    • Deliberate use of delimiters

Globbing

Excerpt of complete file listing:

Example of globbing to narrow file listing:

Same using Mac OS Finder search facilities

Same using regex in R

Punctuation

Deliberate use of "-" and "_" allows recovery of meta-data from the filenames:

  • "_" underscore used to delimit units of meta-data I want later
  • "-" hyphen used to delimit words so my eyes don't bleed

This happens to be R but also possible in the shell, Python, etc.

Recap: machine readable

  • Easy to search for files later

  • Easy to narrow file lists based on names

  • Easy to extract info from file names, e.g. by splitting

  • New to regular expressions and globbing? be kind to yourself and avoid
    • Spaces in file names
    • Punctuation
    • Accented characters
    • Different files named foo and Foo

Human readable

Human readable

  • Name contains info on content

  • Connects to concept of a slug from semantic URLs

Example

Which set of file(name)s do you want at 3 a.m. before a deadline?

Embrace the slug

Recap: Human readable

Easy to figure out what the heck something is, based on its name

Plays well with default ordering

Plays well with default ordering

  • Put something numeric first

  • Use the ISO 8601 standard for dates

  • Left pad other numbers with zeros

Examples

Chronological order:

Logical order: Put something numeric first

Dates

Use the ISO 8601 standard for dates: YYYY-MM-DD

Comprehensive map of all countries in the world that use the MM-DD-YYYY format

Left pad other numbers with zeros


If you don’t left pad, you get this:

10_final-figs-for-publication.R
1_data-cleaning.R
2_fit-model.R

which is just sad :(

Recap: Plays well with default ordering

  • Put something numeric first

  • Use the ISO 8601 standard for dates

  • Left pad other numbers with zeros

Recap

Three principles for (file) names

  1. Machine readable

  2. Human readable

  3. Plays well with default ordering

Pros

  • Easy to implement NOW

  • Payoffs accumulate as your skills evolve and projects get more complex

Go forth and use awesome file names :)